FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Chris Matthews and The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

He's an idiot racist or a racist idiot

Last night, as I am sure many of you are aware, Chris Matthews forgot that Barack Obama was Black. In doing so he reminded the public that he is an idiot and a racist.

First, lets take a look at the video…

Really? Did he really just say all of that? I mean, this is a display of white guilt racialism frozen in amber that a scientist could someday use to recreate the likes of Chris Matthews and his ilk long after they have become extinct. It is the soft bigotry of low expectations, as President Bush called it, and it is at the core of many progressives.

Let’s go through the transcript together and deconstruct this little amber gem…

I was trying to think about who he was tonight. It’s interesting: he is post-racial, by all appearances. I forgot he was black tonight for an hour.

First, as Rush and Beck pointed out today, Matthews only forgot for an hour that the President was Black, the rest of the time Matthews clearly views Obama as black. And that, to Matthews, is a hindrance, as we see in the next blurb…

You know, he’s gone a long way to become a leader of this country, and passed so much history, in just a year or two. I mean, it’s something we don’t even think about.

So, after remembering that Obama is Black, Matthews then remembers that black = lesser. This sort of thinking is anathema to the ideas put forward by true deep thinkers and civil rights activists like MLK Jr., yet it is the wheelhouse of the left as Matthews continues to display.

I was watching, I said, wait a minute, he’s an African-American guy in front of a bunch of other white people. And here he is president of the United States and we’ve completely forgotten that tonight — completely forgotten it.

See there, Matthews’ gut tells him that because Obama is black he is lesser, and because he is lesser it is odd for him to be standing in front of the white people. And then, not only is this lesser standing in front, he is … The PRESIDENT. And we have forgotten that.

I wonder if we should gird our loins Chris?

Ahem…Moving on…

I think it was in the scope of his discussion. It was so broad-ranging, so in tune with so many problems, of aspects, and aspects of American life that you don’t think in terms of the old tribalism, the old ethnicity. It was astounding in that regard. A very subtle fact. It’s so hard to talk about. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about it, but I am. I thought it was profound that way.

Chrissy ends his racialist display with a bunch of flowery praise that just boils down to … “No Negro Dialect”. Thanks for that Harry.

I think something that I‘d mentioned earlier tonight. And I‘m very proud I did it and I hope I can say it the right way. You know, this country has been—and I grew up in a country that was driven apart by race right until the ‘60s. You couldn‘t have a black member of the United States Cabinet. There are no black Cabinet members in the Kennedy administration.

It has been such a big part of our life in big cities, this sort of ethnic debate, ethnic fighting. And then to see the president of the United States who‘s African-American, I was thinking tonight, this isn‘t even an issue tonight.

How far we‘ve come in just a year where it wasn‘t a campaign issue in some parts of the country. It was talked about as something that would hurt him. And it wasn‘t in the room tonight. You can feel it wasn‘t there tonight. And that takes leadership on his part to get us beyond these divisions.

Really, national leadership. And I felt it wonderfully then I saw it almost like an epiphany. And I hope it‘s true, I hope what I saw is true, that we‘ve gotten beyond it. At least—well, in the presidential level, I think. It‘s still going to be out there in American life, but I think he‘s done something wonderful.

I think he‘s taken us beyond black and white in our politics wonderfully so in just a year. I think.

In Matthews’ recollection of the lack of racialist overtones during the SOTU, hardly a unique thing, it becomes apparent that Matthews is aware of his own racialist injections. Making sure to point out that “it wasn’t there”, thus exposing his inner thoughts that he expected it to be there. Then, upon realizing that it wasn’t, Matthews had an epiphany. The epiphany is the realization that you’re the last racist in the room Chrissy.

Having had his epiphanal moment, he engages in the last cleansing act of those afflicted with white guilt. He claims redemption through the leadership of Obama, the black man who Chris Matthews, a white man, put into office.

And just like that…*POOF*…his sins, like those of Harry Reid, are forgiven.